“Something snapped, I suppose. No one can stand too much tension.”

“Something snapped—as simple as that,” she looked suddenly angry. “But it’s eating you all up, just the same. And eating me up, too.”

“Because, don’t you see, it throws a bright hard light—and so is symptomatic—on all our inward divisions. It is an attack.”

“I didn’t know I was divided,” Isabel said quickly. “I’m not.”

“Because, I suspect, you have like me deliberately chosen to shut yourself away from the agonies of your time. Don’t you say, It’s none of my business? My business is my husband, my children—do you have children?” he interrupted himself to ask.

“Yes, two, one in high school, a boy. One girl thirteen years old.”

“And I say that literature is my business.”

“And we’re both wrong?” she asked.

Goldberg pushed the cigarette out hard in the ash tray. “Not wrong, less than we might be, less than Edward was. But we’ll live, Mrs. Ferrier, won’t we?” He smiled his intolerable smile.

“Yes, no doubt we will.” I’ve got to get away from here, she thought. This man is a devil. He’s too brilliant and too unhappy and he wants to hurt me now, and he has hurt me. She looked at her watch, shutting out the thoughts that raced through her mind, with this deliberate gesture.

“Yes,” Goldberg said, “you have to go, don’t you? I’m sorry I have detained you so long.” His face froze. He tapped on a glass with his spoon and looked around for the waitress, then turned to her with a surprisingly human smile, a real one and said, “Do you have half an hour to spare? It seems too bad that you haven’t seen anything of the college. After all, this was Edward’s life, all this. I’d like to show you a few things …”

Isabel hesitated a fraction of a second, saw his face close again, his guard go up, and knew that she must do it, however much she would have liked to go back to her lair, pull the shades down, lie in the dark and smoke and think, perhaps call Henry at the hospital and hear his sane normal voice.

“That’s awfully kind of you,” she said, allowing the thought of Henry to fade. “No one could be more ignorant than I.”